dsl

Posted 10 February 2010 - 05:36 PM

dsl

Master Contributor

Validated Member

225 posts

Gender:Male

Location:Denver

United States

That's pretty cool, thanks for sharing it.

I don't know for certain, but I'm guessing they used something like Papervision 3D to create the interactive 3D bits. Continuing with that guess, they probably created a mesh with their terrain data and used the satellite image as a texture.

The other option, is they have some proprietary Flash extensions to create these. It sounds like the NYTimes graphics department has some top notch developers working for them, so it wouldn't surprise me.

Posted 11 February 2010 - 05:56 AM

dsl

Posted 11 February 2010 - 05:59 AM

dsl

Master Contributor

Validated Member

225 posts

Gender:Male

Location:Denver

United States

I couldn't resist giving this a shot. Here is a rough version of the NYTimes interactive. It might take a few seconds to load, because I'm using a rather large image overlay, and my host is a bit slow. You can click on it and drag it to rotate around. Like I said it is rough, but should be helpful in getting you started, so don't expect a duplicate of what the NYTimes did.

Posted 11 February 2010 - 07:45 AM

That's cool but deadly inaccurate with the snow. For those of you unaware rain & very mild temperatures are forcast through out the duration of the games, before you know it could potentially be so Spring like some events maybe at risk.

"There is much beauty that we fail to see through our own eyes teeming with life forms that give us that perception of our reality. Leaves on the trees blowing gently in the wind, or scarily, the waves pounding through high surf, or lightly on a warm summer’s day; that opportunity to sit or swim in the water on a white beach. That comfort to shout, “The universal conscious do you hear me? I am alive, guide me dear logos towards the path of rightnesses.” Earned what has been kept, no longer to be absorbed into a life filled with cold damn winds and that stubborn fog clouding my vision with nothing but darkness."

dsl

Posted 11 February 2010 - 05:56 PM

dsl

Master Contributor

Validated Member

225 posts

Gender:Male

Location:Denver

United States

Thanks for the feedback. It probably could be turned into something simple where all you need to do is add a model.

Snowgage, your username reminded me of some very similar I saw a while back on ski.com. http://www.ski.com/i...ctive/maps.aspx They are really nice looking, but take a while to load. I don't know much about how they were done, other than the big Java logo on loadup.

Hello, Very interesting link. Well, I have been a "bad boy" and looked the code in the flash file, so I found with what program it was made:http://www.away3d.com/it's free, and has interface for flah & java.I will take sometime to investigate it and see how we can use it with DEM & GIS data...I will try to maintain you all informedBest regards, Fernando

dsl

Posted 12 February 2010 - 11:32 PM

dsl

Master Contributor

Validated Member

225 posts

Gender:Male

Location:Denver

United States

Looks like Away3D is based on Papervision 3D, so in theory you could do the same thing that I did. Get the terrain data into a collada format and display it. However, I'm not saying that's the best way to do it.